新西兰英语 237 Tax

The Tax Working Group, which is a group of experts, gave their report this week. They have been looking at our tax laws to see if they are fair to everyone and if they help the economy to grow. The Working Group said that at the moment some rich peop

新西兰英语 227 Christmas in New Zealand

The weeks leading up to Christmas are a busy time for most New Zealanders. We celebrate the end of the school year with concerts or prize giving ceremonies. There are office parties too to celebrate the end of year with work mates. Anyone who belongs

新西兰英语 390 The Big Day Out

The Big Day Out is a Rock Music Festival that lasts 12 hours, starting at 11am tomorrow. It is held once a year towards the end of January in Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland and then in some of the bigger cities in Australia. There are about 40 acts. Th

新西兰英语 305 Young Farmer of the Year

The winner of the Young Farmer of the Year Contest is Stuart McNaughton from the Tasman region. About 300 young men and women entered the contest earlier this year. Each region had one finalist. They each got good prizes. Then those seven finalists c

新西兰英语 215 Buying or selling a house

A new Code of Conduct became law this week. It tells real estate agents how they must behave when helping you to buy or sell a house. First they must now have a licence from a new government agency, at a cost of $500. If you want to sell your house,

新西兰英语 165 Home Insulation Plan

Many houses in New Zealand are cold. Our traditional wooden house had no insulation. If you live in a house like that, you are paying for heat to escape from the ceiling, walls and under the floor. Insulation is made from material like wool or fibreg

新西兰英语 468 School buildings not safe from earthquakes

Two schools have closed buildings because engineers said they would not be safe in an earthquake. Last Friday Golden Bay High School in Nelson closed one classroom block. It was built 60 years ago, before the 1973 earthquake standards for buildings.

新西兰英语 466 Pike River Mine Inquiry

For background to the Pike River Coal Mine disaster, enter the word coal in the search box. The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the disaster at the Pike River Mine started this week. Twenty-nine miners died in the explosion at the mine. The Inquiry

新西兰英语 235 NCEA results

Senior high school students received their NCEA results last week. NCEA means National Certificate of Educational Achievement. Students in Year 11 need to get 80 credits at Level 1. Some of these credits are from work done in class and this is called

新西兰英语 344 GST increase

On October 1st, GST will increase from 12.5% to 15%. This is a 2.2% increase. At the same time, we will have tax cuts on our pay. Benefits will also increase a little to help with the higher GST. Listen to May 20th 2010 for more about tax cuts and th

新西兰英语 346 Paul Henry suspended for 2 weeks

Paul Henry is a host of TV Ones Breakfast show. On Monday morning, he was interviewing the Prime Minister, John Key about choosing the next Governor-General. The present Governor-General is Sir Anand Satyanand. He is a New Zealander with an Indo-Fiji

新西兰英语 320 Military funeral

The funeral for Lieutenant Tim ODonnell was held today at Linton Military Camp. Linton is the nearest military camp to Tims hometown, Feilding. Tim was killed a week ago in Afghanistan. Listen to August 4th 2010 for more about what happened. He is th

新西兰英语 297 World Refugee Day

June 20th is World Refugee Day, a day to remember refugees world wide who have had to leave their homes and may never return. A refugee is a person who has had to escape from their country because they could be imprisoned or killed for their beliefs.

新西兰英语 218 30 years since Erebus crash

To remember the Erebus crash 30 years ago, Air NZ is paying for six people to fly to Antarctica and visit Mt Erebus. The people chosen are family members of someone who was killed in that plane crash. These six people were chosen by ballot. To find o

新西兰英语 169 John Key’s visit to the Pacific

Last week, John Key visited four Pacific Island countries: Tonga, Samoa, Niue and the Cook Islands. He spent one day in each country. New Zealand gives financial aid to each of these countries and one reason for the visit was to find out what each co

新西兰英语 167 “Treelord” settlement

See June 26th 2008 for background to this news. On Saturday, eight Maori iwi celebrated the Treelord settlement in Turangi near Lake Taupo. It is called Treelord because the fishing settlement with another iwi was called Sealord. The celebrations at

新西兰英语 274 New Zealand Music Month

Today was the beginning of New Zealand music month. Every May for the last 10 years, New Zealand has celebrated our own music. The Auckland band, Opshop, decided to do something different to celebrate 10 years of New Zealand Music month. They hired a

新西兰英语 290 A new New Zealand bank

Three finance companies are planning to merge to become a bank. At the moment, there is no name for this bank. The three finance companies are the Canterbury Building Society, Southern Cross Building Society and Marac finance which is owned by Pyne G

新西兰英语 287 Dairy Farmers feel hopeful

Fonterra said today that the 11,000 dairy farmers in their co-operative will receive an opening price of $6.60 a kg of milk solids for the 2010 / 2011 year. They will also get 30c to 50c for each share they have in the company. In fact, the price cou

新西兰英语 413 Official Cash Rate

The governor of the Reserve Bank, Dr Bollard, reduced the official cash rate (OCR) by half a percent from 3% to 2.5% today. For background to the OCR, listen to June 10th 2010 and follow the links. Most banks immediately dropped the floating mortgage